We examine the selection characteristics of infrared and sub-mm surveys with
IRAS, Spitzer, BLAST, Herschel and SCUBA and identify the range of dust
temperatures these surveys are sensitive to, for galaxies in the ULIRG
luminosity range (12<log(LIR)<13), between z=0 and z=4. We find that the extent
of the redshift range over which surveys are unbiased is a function of the
wavelength of selection, flux density limit and ULIRG luminosity. Short
wavelength (<200{\mu}m) surveys with IRAS, Spitzer/MIPS and Herschel/PACS are
sensitive to all SED types in a large temperature interval (17-87K), over a
substantial fraction of their accessible redshift range. On the other hand,
long wavelength (>200{\mu}m) surveys with BLAST, Herschel/ SPIRE and SCUBA are
significantly more sensitive to cold ULIRGs, disfavouring warmer SEDs even at
low redshifts. We evaluate observations in the context of survey selection
effects, finding that the lack of cold ULIRGs in the local (z<0.1) Universe is
not a consequence of selection and that the range of ULIRG temperatures seen
locally is only a subset of a much larger range which exists at high redshift.
We demonstrate that the local luminosity-temperature (L-T) relation, which
indicates that more luminous sources are also hotter, is not applicable in the
distant Universe when extrapolated to the ULIRG regime, because the scatter in
observed temperatures is too large. Finally, we show that the difference
between the ULIRG temperature distributions locally and at high redshift is not
the result of galaxies becoming colder due to an L-T relation which evolves as
a function of redshift. Instead, they are consistent with a picture where the
evolution of the infrared luminosity function is temperature dependent, i.e.
cold galaxies evolve at a faster rate than their warm counterparts.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
